All was not lost.

Earlier this month when we lost all our Marans to a mink attack we were lucky enough to have a dozen of their eggs so we set them in the incubator. Although it's quite early in the season to start setting eggs we figured we had nothing to lose,

I'm glad we took the chance as ten of the eggs were fertile and last weekend we had eight chicks hatch,

Little bundles of fluff, so cute.

so all was not lost and we will have Maran birds running around again. I just hope the mink does not return. The three attacks that we have had since moving here have always been when it's been raining very heavily and the river bursts it's bank, we suspect that this is where the mink have come from, when the river is at it's normal level we don't seem to get the problem.
It might still be February but spring seems to be here,

daffodils are out everywhere, at least a month ahead,

even the rhubarb has made a very early appearance and we had our first picking earlier this week.

One surprise today was finding a Calendula out in bloom, at least three months ahead of itself.

The garden has lots of colour for so early in the year,

it's still cold at night  but we are getting some nice sunny days with real warmth in it.

We seem to be up to date with planting all the early seeds, cauliflower, parsnip, spinach, Brussel sprouts, leaks and onion seed have all been sown into trays or modules. Next month, subject to weather conditions the first early potatoes will be sown, the first of the peas and French beans, I will also get the Sweetpeas and tomatoes sown. It will soon be summer.

Spring time, painted in water colours.

I have kept myself amused during the wet winter with an assortment of crafts,

                                           mainly glass painting,

Working out what works and what doesn't.

I have also tried doing Faberge type eggs from some goose eggs kindly donated to me by a friend, not the easiest thing to do but I'm sure by the time our goose starts laying I will have a better idea of how to do them.

Just to remind us what the sun looks like we took a photo of the beautiful sunset this evening,

everything was bathed in a glow of gold.

Susie looking wistfully out the window.

  

Problem with the sexes.

Spring is rapidly moving forward, blossom on the peach tree, swelling buds on the plums and leafs opening on the female Kiwi, the male however is still thinking about it, his buds are only just swelling. This is going to create a problem, with the female so much more forward she will bloom earlier than the male and we need the male flowers  to pollinate the female. I just don't know why the male should be so behind, they are the same variety, grown quite closely together, so the same conditions. This is not the first time we have had this problem, it also happened to us in Spain with our outside Kiwi's. If anyone has a solution to this problem please let me know. Meanwhile I shall try to produce more warmth for the male vine and see if I can get him to get a move on. If memory serves me correctly the flowers bloom in May so I have time to try to advance him.

1st rhubarb picking.

I am always impatient for the first picking rhubarb, today was the first day, six days later than last year and the stems are not quite as long as last years but they are thicker, we had a colder February this year, which explains why it's that bit later. The Purple Sprouting broccoli is producing an abundance of spears, this should continue for at least another month by which time we should have plenty of spinach, early peas and maybe even some asparagus.

Frogs spawn, hopefully it will survive.

Frogs have found their way to the pond, we have a load of spawn, whether it comes to anything remains to be seen as Daffy duck still likes to have her afternoon bath in the pond, but at least it has been visited by the frogs and found to be a suitable place to lay their eggs. If they don't survive we will have to exclude Daffy next year, we need frogs!

Hamonada

Reading one of my blogger friends posts yesterday she made mention of a Filipino dish made with shoulder of pork, it just so happened that we were having a shoulder of pork joint for Sunday roast and I had the rest of the ingredients to hand,

Pork, roast potatoes, swede and spinach, 100% home grown.

It's called Hamonada, there are lots of variations of this recipe on the internet, I kept to the recipe that she had described, it was delicious, certainly one we will do again. Many thanks Linda.

For desert I made Crèma Catalana, more or less the same as Crème Brulee,  one of our favourite deserts.

More willow sculptures.

We have discovered even more willow sculptures, I would love to know if they are the work of just one person or if there is a whole network of willow sculptors in the area. They are all lovely and real works of art.

Geese enjoying the grass.

On our way back from delivering eggs on Saturday we spotted several small flocks of geese all enjoying life around Lake Gara, not near any farms or houses we wonder if they are wild geese or escapes, we were unable to identify the breed, so maybe someone is missing a gaggle of geese, in all, there were over twenty over a distance of a mile or so, lovely to see and they would be safe from foxes with such a large lake to escape in.
Tomorrow the early potatoes have to be planted, St Patricks day is the traditional day to do this, the main crop will follow in a couple of weeks at Easter. With all these potatoes being planted we will have to get pigs to eat them all, Simon has given up eating potatoes due to gout, in the two weeks since he has given them up the condition has improved, now he has to come to terms with eating no sweet peppers or tomatoes and that will be hard for him.

A river running into Lough Gara.